Hambali crony turned him in

The whereabouts of alleged Asian terror kingpin Hambali remained shrouded in secrecy yesterday amid reports one of his lieutenants turned him in to Thai and US investigators.

And in another blow against terror, Indonesian police said they had arrested several people in connection with this month's bombing of the J. W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta, which killed 12 people and wounded 150.

"Yes, we have made arrests," national police chief General Da'i Bachtiar said.

He declined to say when the arrests took place or how many people had been detained.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra refused to say where Hambali was being held by American authorities, but declared that the suspected bombing mastermind's entire al-Qaeda-linked network in Thailand had been wiped out with his arrest and that of three associates earlier.

The trail to Hambali was exposed by an "irregular money transaction" noticed by investigators, the Prime Minister said in his weekly radio address to the nation.

This "resulted in the arrest of the first case, the second, the third, and now we have got the fourth man - Mr Hambali - who is regarded as the last one in our land," he said.

"Finally we have got them all."

Hambali, 39, was captured on Monday, 80 kilometres north of Bangkok.

He is reputed to be the chief operative of the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah, which originated in Indonesia. Military sources say Hambali was handed over to US investigators and flown out of the country on Wednesday.